Yummy was wandering the periphery of the land, adding her strength to the land’s protection. I could feel her serenity, an odd emotion for a vampire.
Mud, a plant-person and claimed by Soulwood, must have been feeling the peace of the land too, because she suddenlycollapsed on the sofa. Cherry joined her, snuggling under her arm and bopping her knee. Occam sat at the big desk, his back to me, working on his computer.
The floors felt…happy. Tears gathered in my eyes and I blinked them away.
Sliding on my slipper, I took down three of my favorite pottery bowls—lovely leaf green bowls turned by hand at the church. I used to call them Leah’s bowls, back when I thought of the house as still belonging to John and his first wife, and myself as an interloper. Now they, and everything else inside, were mine. And soon would be Occam’s and mine. My cat-man, Mud, and I would be a family, a real family.
With an old steel ladle, I stirred soup Mama had sent over when Sam delivered Mud and Occam’s car. The note on the soup jar had said,In case your hands still hurt too much. Love, Mama.She had also sent a loaf of bread, already sliced, for the same reason. Mama would have been horrified to know I hadn’t baked bread in the last few days, so Mud had put the ingredients together and now we had four loaves rising. The soup was steaming in the old pot, heated up on the stove, which was putting out enough warmth to keep the house cozy most of the night. Overhead, the old fan was moving the heated air.
Home.I finally had areal home. I blinked away tears.
I dished the soup into the bowls, set the table, and poured hot lemon tea for us.
Occam looked over and met my eyes as he closed his laptop and joined me. He checked the wood in the stove, added a few logs he had split that fall, and washed his hands as I finished up. Quietly he said, “We got work for later. And I most likely can’t get down the mountain tonight, with the ice so heavy. Mind if I sleep in one of the upstairs bedrooms?”
Cohabiting without marriage while having custody of a minor was frowned upon—though not outlawed—by the state. In contrast, the church was all for it. I didn’t want my sister to draw any connection between my home and the three-wife Nicholson home. We were done with the polygamist life and she needed to know that.
“Upstairs might be best,” I agreed. “Yummy had plenty of quilts in the bedroom across from Mud’s.” I looked at the stairs. I didn’t know how careful Yummy was about such things. “Ihaven’t seen them so I assume they’re still there, hopefully piled on the bed, not on the closet floor.”
Occam didn’t volunteer what he might think about Yummy’s willingness to fold linens, for which I was grateful. He might know an awful lot.
“Come and get it,” I said to Mud.
My sister sat at the table, mumbled grace over the meal, ate while hiding yawns, and then dragged herself up the stairs as if exhausted. Monday was a school day, if the weather allowed it. For Occam and me, the night was still young and we had PsyLED Unit Eighteen reports to read, bread to bake, and maybe a midnight snack of jam, warm bread, and Sister Erasmus’ wine.
* * *
At four a.m. my cell dinged. I heard Occam’s ding from upstairs. Middle-of-the-night texts to both of us meant HQ and problems. I rolled over and picked up my cell.
The text said:LaFleur, Rettell, and FireWind are en route to a new body found at a site. There’s significant blood spatter, and the locals seem to think it should be our case. Are you available to respond?
I tossed off the quilts, shoved my sock-covered feet into slippers, and pulled on a robe, making my way through the chilly house and out onto the front porch. The world was black and icy, the road down impassable. Strange pearly lightning still flickered here and there in the clouds. The only way down would be if the road melted by midday, which was usual in passing winter storms.
I considered the knowledge that I could bring heat from belowground and melt the ice. That would require a true emergency because that risked pulling the magma I had once accidentally disturbed closer to the surface. I really didn’t want to be responsible for a volcano in Knoxville when it wasn’t life-or-death.
Occam opened the door and stepped out behind me. He was fully clothed, wearing his coat, a gobag in one hand. When he saw the landscape, he said, “Huh.”
I called Tandy on speaker and said, “Ingram and Occam here. The road down is impassable.”
Occam said, “I could shift and meet transport at the bottomof the hill. If there’s a marked city or county unit nearby, they could provide transport.” He looked up at the sky and added, “Dawn would be here before I could reach the address on your text.”
“Stand by.”
“Stand by” could mean for seconds or hours, so we went back inside and closed out the cold. Cherry padded silently down the stairs, the cats trailing slowly behind her, Jezzie braving the handrail in the unlit house. Occam’s cat eyes could see better in the dark than I could, and he shucked his coat and began the process of reviving the stove’s fire, moving as silently as the cats, to keep Mud from waking. The house batteries were fully charged, but if the power went out we would need them for computers, cells, heat, and hot water, so I lit a lantern and carried it with me to dress.
When I went back to the kitchen, Occam had started coffee and water for tea and had a cast-iron skillet heating on the stovetop. According to the church that was women’s work, and I figured that no matter how long I lived with the man, his willingness to do things around the house would be a surprise. He had no idea how I reacted when I caught him doing something in or around the house. Or maybe he did. Cat nose and all that. A man doing housework was pure-T-sexy.
“I put another quilt over Mud and pulled her door shut so we could work.” Humor in his voice, he added, “The cats are on the porch using the litter box, but Cherry might need a little encouragement.”
The puppy had never seen ice, but she couldn’t hold her bladder much longer. While Occam started bacon and scrambled eggs in the fry pan, I pulled on my work jacket, shoved my feet into my boots, and leashed her. “Come on, girl. Life is full of unpleasant sensory experiences, and this won’t be the worst.”
Cherry was not happy, but eventually assumed the position under the eave of the house and did her business. Breakfast was on the table when we got back, and Occam had put fresh water and food out for the critters.
I didn’t pray for help very much, if ever, but I did thank God every day for my cat-man.
Over the course of the next hour, Tandy kept us informed as PsyLED maneuvered through the treacherous streets andarrived at the address where the DB had been reported. Then he sent their comms and their vest cam activity to Occam’s computer, where we watched the unit’s shuddering movements and heard their voices as they approached a residential ranch house in a middle-class part of town.
Moments later we saw the body from three different angles as they discovered it. It was female, wrapped in blankets, and, if the blood spatter was any indication, she had been stabbed to death. Blood was everywhere. It painted the walls around her and soaked into the linens she was wrapped in. She was emaciated, pale white.
